From Personal Blogging to Corporate Blogging

I started blogging in 2003, at a time when personal blogs were just starting to take off and blogged rather avidly for over 6 years. My blog posts ranged from the extremely personal (and thus immature) to travelogues and essays on more serious topics. An expert on the subject, I maintained over this period, several blogs and was quick to interact with other bloggers and always ready to help out new bloggers. Somewhere along the way however, social networking sites sprung up and the attention moved from blogs to notes on Facebook. And then came along Twitter, a micro-blogging service that allows you to answer the question, “What are you doing?” by sending short text messages in 140 characters.

I balked at the idea of controlling my verbosity and continued blogging. And thus, the move from personal blogging to corporate blogging was easy. I welcomed the idea of reading up on the trending topics and writing about them. What was not so easy however was mastering the art of tweeting and sending out the right message in just 140 characters. I had mixed reactions towards Twitter. On one hand, it represented another social network and even more flighty conversations (how much can you say in 140 characters after all?). On the other hand it was an extremely fertile ground for curating excellent material for my teaching career as well as my then secondary career in corporate communications. It allowed my to keep abreast of the latest in the world of technology and FLE.

When I first started managing the Facebook and Twitter accounts for Bibkosh, I was unsure. Facebook being familiar ground was easier to master. Twitter however required a little more patience. It took me a while to get the hang of using the right #tags and not shying away from entering a twitter conversation between two people I didn’t know from Jack.

I started by following the tech blogs TechCrunch and Mashable, reading up on various articles on Social Media, all of which got safely archived in Bibkosh. As I got the hang of the space, I started exploring and following more people, interacting with them and exchanging views on everything from the latest gadget to current events. A year later, I am addicted to Twitter and completely believe in the power of Twitter to carry forward the company’s message and spread the word far more efficiently than any elaborate advertising campaign.